SAVING LIVES: LifeStar turns 25

Published 12:00 am, Sunday, June 20, 2010

HARTFORD-- Dr. Cathryn Fogel has seen it all. An anesthesiologist at Hartford Hospital, Fogel is often working in the level 1 Trauma center when some of the most critical calls come in. But she never expected to hear her own daughter was a patient flown in on LifeStar.

"That particular evening around 10 o'clock, I got a phone call," said Fogel. "They needed me to identify a young lady who had come in on LifeStar. They thought it might be my daughter."

"I was in the front passenger seat of my boyfriend's car," Fogel's daughter Maurissa said. "It was wintertime. We just passed one of our friends and came back into the lane. The car.... lost control. We were trapped inside the car. Then LifeStar came. They got me out of the car and flew me to Hartford Hospital."

Maurissa is one of nearly 24, 000 patients who has been flown in LifeStar since Hartford Hospital launched the program in 1985, about 1,400 annually. Fogel believes her daughter is alive because of it.

"We're all taught that the first hour after this kind of injury is critical," Fogel said. "Maurissa was in the emergency room within a half hour of the accident."

Maurissa Fogel was critically injured but has since made a full recovery. She and her family took part in LifeStar's 25th anniversary celebration on June 18.

Lenworth Jacobs, chief of Trauma at Hartford Hospital, was pivotal in bringing LifeStar to the state. He flew on that first flight.

"The first call came--it was just after midnight," Jacobs remembers. "It was an amazing experience--for the patient, who did well, and for all of us."

"What LifeStar did is it became a flying intensive care unit," Jacobs said. "So that you were, in essence, admitted to HH right at the scene of the crash."

Dr. Ken Robinson is associate chief of Medicine and Director of the LifeStar Helicopter Program. Things have changed, he said.

"We originally were operating on the ground at Hartford Hospital," Robinson said. "Since that time the program has grown to add another aircraft. We've moved our operations to the roof of Hartford Hospital... and built a hangar there also."

"LifeStar epitomizes Hartford Hospital's commitment to patients, to families across Connecticut and beyond," said Hartford Hospital Executive Vice President and COO Jeff Flaks. "These are visible symbols of everything we do at Hartford Hospital."

And patients like Maurissa Fogel are living reminders that LifeStar serves a critical role in our state, saving lives for more than two decades, Flaks said.